Jefferson Adams is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. His poems, essays and photographs have appeared in Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, CALIBAN, Hayden's Ferry Review, Huffington Post, the Mississippi Review, and Slate among others.

He is a member of both the National Writers Union, the International Federation of Journalists, and covers San Francisco Health News for Examiner.com.

Enzyme Quickly Breaks Down Wheat Protein

Celiac.com 05/23/2007 - The results of a study recently
published in the journal Gut suggest that the enzyme prolyl endoprotease
from Aspergillus niger (AN-PEP) taken along with meals might allow patients
with celiac disease to safely consume gluten on occasion.

The negative effects of celiac disease are due in large
part to an immune response to gluten.

Because proline-rich gluten proteins resist the digestive
enzymes of the gastro-intestinal tract, they are very likely suspects
in the generation of this immune response.

A team of doctors in the Netherlands set out to assess
the abilities of a post-proline cutting enzyme, prolyl endoprotease from
Aspergillus niger (AN-PEP) in breaking down gluten. The research team
was made up of doctors Cristina Mitea (1), Robert Havenaar (2), Jan Wouter
Drijfhout (1), Luppo Edens (3), Liesbeth Dekking (1)* and Frits Koning
(1).

The study was not performed on actual celiac patients,
but used a dynamic system that mimics the human gastrointestinal tract
(TIM system). Using the TIM system, the team performed two experiments.
The first used the TIM-system to process a slice of bread with and without
the presence of AN-PEP. The second experiment used the TIM-system to process
standard fast food items, again both with and without the presence of
AN-PEP.

Samples of the digesting food were taken from the TIM
systems stomach, duodenum, jejunum and ileum compartments from
zero to four hours after the beginning of the experiment. These samples
were evaluated for levels of immunogenic peptides from gliadins and glutenins
by monoclonal antibody based competition assays, Western blot analysis
and proliferation T-cell assays.

Results of both experiments showed that AN-PEP broke
down gluten in the stomach so effectively that almost no gluten reached
the duodenum compartment. Because these results show that AN-PEP is capable
of speeding the breakdown of gluten in a gastrointestinal system that
closely mimics live digestion, the team concluded that AN-PEP might offer
celiac patients an opportunity to stray from their strict gluten free
diets from time to time.